1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an advertising method using software products, and more particularly, to an advertising method using software products in which an advertisement is included in a program of a software product supported by an advertisement sponsor and a user purchases the software products at a low price or for free so that the user watches the advertisement of the sponsor when using the software product, instead of a software developer directly selling the software product to consumers.
2. Description of the Related Art
People in modern society are living in a flood of advertisements. Advertisement sponsors hope that consumers watch their own advertisements, while consumers even think it is a waste of time to watch an advertisement they do not have an interest in. Nevertheless, advertisement sponsors hope that consumers obtain more information about their products from advertisement so that consumers finally choose their products being in competition with rival products in the market.
These days, however, as countless advertisements from mass media such as TV, radio, newspaper or magazine inundate many and unspecified people, much more expenses are involved whereas the efficiency of advertisement is lowered compared to advertisement targeting specified consumers.
Also, people in modern society are living in a flood of various software products. However, programs for limited use and a specialized field normally have a limited number of consumers and thus the price thereof becomes considerably high. Accordingly, much efforts and finances are required to determine and purchase necessary software. Also, vendors of software programs distribute beta-version programs to users for free or at a low price in order to allow their software programs to be tested by users to see if there are any defects or bugs in the software programs, or to allow time for the users to be accustomed to the software programs. However, as such trials are just for the testing of the software programs prior to the official release of products to the market, most people do not seem to want to take part in the beta programs.
For the above reasons, users are reluctant to purchase expensive software programs and feel helpless when they encounter new and better programs when using the purchased programs. Thus, users may be attracted to use an illegally copied version of the programs. Also, from the perspective of the program developers, there will be less desire to develop and improve programs.
To solve these problems that can occur in the advertisement and software industries, a new method should be searched for.